i don't intend to be deep -- it's how i feel. it's what i think. i mean think about, say, jacques tati. his (v great) films make total hash of the style/substance dichotomy. they are patently the same thing.

btw a few folx (e.g. glenn "never met a film-crit inside-baseball argument i didn't like" kenny) are comparing this unfavorably to walter hill's the driver, an obvious (even overweening?) influence. that's fine. but the terms on which the comparison is made are often fishy. well-rounded characters? psychologically realistic? the driver is one of the most (gloriously, on occasion) stylized and pretentious films to come out of new hollywood -- the characters there are even blanker and more axiomatic than the ones in drive. there is nothing resembling character psychology in that film. there is also a fuckton of stuff in hill's film that is dubious, even risible. that doesn't diminish its orginality. but like drive it is a formal exercise--and i feel like people are donning their rose-colored glasses in claiming its inevitable superiority to this new film.

also someone kinda mentioned this upthread but i thought the way some of the songs' lyrics were on-the-nose was itself part of the retro vibe.

morbs btw i am not claiming your tastes are universally highbrow, just that your persona seems characterized by this sort of aching condescension toward everything -- highbrows like "lowbrow" fare, in fact it's part of the job description since sontag et al. we probably share a lot of tastes, in fact, it's just the "pithy" way that you put down everything that irks.

often when people criticize a film for "style over substance," when i watch the film what i find are actually failures of style. trying to think of an example. a lot of neo-noirs, maybe. just not really this one.

Some publications having a laugh at internet folk/critics for always saying Gosling is "The Next Big Thing" and then the totals for this movie came in. Really snarky shit. Which annoys the hell out of me. Gosling could probably be a big star if he really wanted to, but he seems to have very little interest in fronting the kind of projects that would crossover.

Also the whole "stars can carry a movie" thing seems to be largely over anyway.

he's been in some (moderately) succesful movies! it's probably to his credit that he's doing more drives and blue valentines than the sub-notebook bullshit he probably coulda been sleepwalking thru since.

It opened on 2,300-odd screens or something like that. Third behind The Lion King and Contagion is not bad at all, and it's probably made it's budget back by now. Fared much better than Straw Dogs or I Don't Know How She Does It, but box-office reporters love to rub arthouse/critics/the internets "failures" into everyone's face.

Not that this is the same thing. Critics liked Scott Pilgrim and, to a lesser extent, Kick-Ass, but those were triumphed by the Comic-Con, Aintitcoolnews Geek contingent, which is a whole different thing. These publications don't seem to understand that.

Aye, The Notebook wasn't much of a thing when it came out, but it has built a huge reputation from saddo-Nicolas 'I Don't Write Melodrama" Sparks fans. And girls who just think Gosling is hawt - which is fair enough.

probs because people with kids who are you pretty young are the children of people who were kids when it came out and they all thought "oh man kid you should see this it is the best" but really they just wanted to go to the theatre and be taken back to a time before they had kids/worries.

i haven't seen the notebook and eons and despite lamp's tsk-tsk'ing i'm not about to go back to it but while eric may be right i do have a weakness for actors that could have been leading beefcake who "took another path."